Buridan, John (Jean) - Oxford Reference
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UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA The Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages Sign in Edited by Robert E. Bjork
Publisher: Oxford University Press Print Publication Date: 2010 Print ISBN-13: 9780198662624 Published online: 2010 Current Online Version: 2010 eISBN: 9780199574834
Buridan, John (c.1295/1300–c. 1360) in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (2 ed.)
Buridan, John (c.1300–after 1360) in The Oxford Dictionary of Buridan, John (Jean) (c.1295–1361) Career *arts*master and leading member of the Philosophy (2 rev ed.) *Picardy nation at the University of *Paris. View overview page for this topic »
Buridan was a brilliant logician and, thanks to his many students who spread his teachings and writings throughout *universities in Italy and central Europe, one of the most influential interpreters of Aristotle in the later MA. His logical Related Content masterwork, the Summulae de Dialectica, is a comprehensive textbook combining the traditional *logic of Aristotle with the newer, *nominalist methods focused on the semantics of terms and propositions. He brought the same IN THIS WORK innovative approach to the teaching of Aristotle, addressing various problems in Aristotle’s *metaphysics and natural Aristotelianism *philosophy through logical analysis. He popularized the theory of impetus, derived from *John Philoponus through art the Arabic commentators—an account of projectile motion to replace the flawed Aristotelian theory of antiperistasis. His name is associated with ‘Buridan’s Ass’, the parable of a donkey allegedly starving to death because it has no free will reason to choose between two equidistant and equally tempting piles of hay, though this illustration is not found in his John Philoponus (c.490–c.575) writings. It is probably the work of later opponents, wishing to satirize Buridan’s idea that freedom consists in the logic ability to defer choice. See also aristoteLianism; Free WiLL; motion.
Master of Arts
metaphysics
motion JacK ZupKo
nominalism About the Index Show related links Search across all sources Paris philosophy, natural Bibliography Picardy J. Buridan, Summulae de Dialectica, tr. G. Klima (2001). universities Find this resource: Abbreviations W. J. Courtenay, ed., ‘John Buridan at the University of Paris’, Vivarium, 42/1 (2004). Find this resource: RELATED OVERVIEWS J. J. M. H. Thijssen and J. Zupko, eds, The Metaphysics and Natural Philosophy of John Buridan (2001). scholasticism Find this resource: nominalism J. Zupko, John Buridan: Portrait of a 14th-Century Arts Master (2003). logic Find this resource: View all related overviews »
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